In an increasingly security-conscious world, protecting access to information and/or to systems from unwanted discovery and/or corruption is a major issue for both consumers and businesses.
The growth of system connectivity has been one of the major developments in recent years. Fewer and fewer systems are operating as stand-alone devices, and most of today's systems are increasingly becoming elements of complex networks. This growth in networking allows improved performance and increased flexibility. However, with this growth in system distribution, system security, and protection against unwanted access and/or corruption, has become a major concern for systems owners and/or operators.
As PCs become greater points of convergence in the home of the future, more and more applications may use such systems as central points for distribution of data, for example with video and/or audio content, or for processing of said data. However, an IP protection problem arises for companies which produce PC plug-in cards. As these companies must ship binary software code, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) binaries, or other “soft IP” with their products, the most usual location for storing said binaries may be the PC hard-drive. Such storage may expose these binaries to potential security threats and/or malicious access where the security of the host systems may be breached. These binaries and/or software IP packages may be visible to any of thousands or millions of people, who can use any standard binary viewing tool to view this IP, simply by examining their hard drives. Also, the vendor may want to store on the hard-drive sensitive parameters or other non-execution type data files which should not be available to the general public.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.